The Smart Money

by Lia Matera

  Then I pulled out of my parking space and cruised slowly past my papa’s Lincoln.

  “I shouldn’t have done it,” I admitted, “but when Kirsten went with you in the ambulance, I snooped around your house a little bit.”

  Gary muttered, “Christ!”

  “Your back porch was really a mess.”

  Gary made no response, but he breathed like an angry man.

  I drove us out to the jetty. I drove past the ghostly housing development that had displaced all the egrets and lately attracted my antisocial cousin. I crossed the expanse of hard-packed sand separating the streets from the rocky tip of the jetty, and I parked the car. We were a few hundred feet from the huge, jagged rocks that snaked out to sea.

  There might have been a moon; it was too overcast to tell. The rocks were visible only as a darker shade of black against the gray-black sky. The sea, wild from the week’s storms, battered the rocks, sending up a cloud of salt spray that coated my windshield, sheeting off in thin rivulets.

  Gary’s voice was gruff. “I thought you said your cousin was camping in one of those houses back there.”

  “No lights. So if he’s here at all, he’s sitting out on the rocks.”

  I heard Gary fumble for the door handle, and I reached across and stopped him, pulling his wrist back. “No. If Hal’s here, I want to talk to him alone. I’ll make him come out where you can see us from the car, but I want to talk to him alone.”

  I switched the motor back on, and I turned on the headlights. Mist swirled in the double tunnel of illumination.

  The dashboard lit Gary’s face from the bottom up, accentuating a pronounced frown.

  I reached forward and turned on the heater. Then I climbed quickly out of the car, slamming the door behind me.

  37

  Almost as soon as I walked past the misty glow of my headlights, I stumbled into Hal.

  At first, I was ecstatic. I slipped my arms around his neck and kissed him. His response was gratifying.

  Then I remembered my errand. I backed away. The wind whistled over the flats, stinging my face with needles of sand and flecks of sea foam.

  “What are you doing here, Hal?” He was just a dark shape, even at arm’s length. I reached into my coat for the gun, pulling it up and sideways, until most of it was in my pocket, barrel dangling into the coat lining. “Your house is all boarded up.”

  “I didn’t hear about Sandy till a few hours ago,” he said over the wail of wind and pounding of waves. “I went by your house, you weren’t there. I tried the hospital, dragon lady downstairs didn’t want to let me in. I went up anyway, but you weren’t around. So I phoned your place.” Even shouting, he sounded puzzled. “My dad said you were coming out here. To the jetty.”

  “How’d you get here so fast?”

  “Caught a ride to the turnoff. What are you doing way the hell out here?”

  “Did Uncle Henry tell you about the note? That I went to the hospital to meet you?”

  I listened to the sea hammer the rocks, listened to the wind shriek between them. It seemed a long time before Hal answered. “He said you got a note from me. But Laura—”

  “I knew it wasn’t from you.” I glanced behind me, at the arcs of light from my headlamps. “Gary’s with me.”

  “Gleason? Why?”

  “I told him I was looking for you. I’m going to say I didn’t find you.”

  “What the hell would I be doing out here? I only came because of what my dad said, I wouldn’t have— And anyway, why bring Gleason? You’re not afraid of me?”

  “Look Hal, if we’re going to talk, let’s get behind—” I started toward the rocks, but my cousin grabbed my arm. Even through two layers of wool, his grip was painful.

  “My dad said you asked him to—”

  At that moment, Gary Gleason maneuvered my car so that the headlights swept across the sand and caught us standing there, me trying to pull free of Hal’s grasp.

  I looked at Hal, turning my back on the Mercedes.

  His face was starkly white in the glare of the headlights. “Why did you bring Gleason? Why him, of all—?”

  “He’ll be here in a second. Damn it, Hal—use your head!”

  “What’s left of it?”

  I should have remembered my plan, acted in accordance with it. But the pain in Hal’s voice paralyzed me. I reached out, in the spotlight of my own headlights, and caressed my cousin’s cheek.

  And then it was too late. Gary Gleason stood in the circle of light with us, his frizzy hair glowing like a halo.

  He looked from Hal to me. His face was taut with anger. “You’re not afraid of him,” he said, barely loud enough for me to hear. “That’s not why you brought me here, is it? All this crap with your heater; what the hell are you up to? Bringing me all the way out here.”

  “I was looking for Hal,” I insisted. I glanced at my cousin, warning him not to deny it. But Hal was staring at a point near Gary’s belt buckle. He reached toward it, then froze. Slowly, still staring, he lowered the extended arm.

  Gary was saying, “What are you trying to prove, Laura? That you know how we did it?”

  I followed Hal’s gaze. My ex-husband held a small, short-barreled black gun.

  I slipped my hand into my pocket. Please god, let me have timed things right. “Did what?”

  “Never mind. Forget it. Why’d you drag me out to the hospital?”

  I stared at my ex-husband’s gun. In my mind’s eye, I saw them again, Senators Hansen and Dzhura, walking down the airplane steps, waving. Looking startled. Falling.

  Two men dead, and I hadn’t allowed myself—or the jury—to care.

  “I wanted you to know it wasn’t safe,” I told Gary. “Whatever you were planning. I wanted you to know that Sandy’s window was locked, and that the nurses were alerted.”

  “How did you know the note was from me?” The wind and waves were louder than Gary’s voice, but I heard him. Almost to the exclusion of other sounds. The gun was a powerful hearing aid.

  “You’d stayed in the same hospital room as Sandy. You knew the window was unlocked. Also, your view of my house. You knew when I was gone, when you could leave me a note.”

  My ex-husband ran a hand over his wind-whipped halo of hair. “Come on, Laura! Your cousin could have gone to the hospital and fooled with the window, for all you knew. And I saw him knock on your door tonight; that’s why I signed his name. How’d you know he didn’t leave the note?”

  Gary’s gun was steady. I stared at the barrel like a mouse at a snake. Sick or not, what the hell right did Bean have—

  My cousin answered for me. “I can’t read or write.”

  I’d been right, but it still felt like he’d slapped me.

  “Bullshit!” Gary’s voice rang with exasperation. “Of course you can—”

  “I caught a bullet in the head in Vietnam.” My cousin’s voice was lower in pitch than I’d ever heard it. “Four-year-olds read better than I do.”

  The wind seemed to screech with malevolence. The reading and writing center of the brain is in the left hemisphere; I’d remembered that. And I’d remembered the dearth of books and magazines in Hal’s house.

  And other things. My cousin’s income tax forms: hard to apply for jobs if you can’t write, impossible to get any but the most menial if you can’t read. No driver’s license; not without taking a renewal exam. Even the Thorazine: a way to cope with long nights without books, magazines, or newspapers; with being unable to send or receive letters; with being unable to read price tags or bus schedules or street signs. Undrugged—as Hal claimed to be—it would be easy to fall into the habit of brooding, to drink too much and grow bitter.

  Such an evil weapon, the gun.

  I looked at Gary’s gun, wondering if it was a thirty-eight. Wondering if it had blown holes in Sandy’s chest.
“What would you have done at the hospital, if you’d had me and Sandy alone?”

  “Put this gun to your detective’s head and asked you then what I’m going to ask you now.”

  I couldn’t see my ex-husband very well. Hal and I faced the headlights; Gary’s back was to them. I could only hope his attention was directed to my face. I wrapped my fingers around the grip of the Buntline Scout. The gun was warmer than my numb hand, awkward to hold. I knew what Gary was going to ask me, and I knew he wouldn’t like my answer.

  “You fell off your roof while you were cleaning your rain gutter,” I said, just to say something. I inched the Scout out of my coat pocket. “My papa didn’t run over you. You just said that to warn me off.”

  I felt exposed and vulnerable in the glare of the lights, with a huge revolver dangling from my hand. I didn’t know how to cock the gun and fire it—I wasn’t sure I would, even if I could. And Gary was smart. Smart enough to observe my fumbling revulsion and realize I didn’t know how to shoot. But if I could keep him focused on my face and my words, I might be able to pass the revolver to Hal. In Hal’s hands, it would be a potent threat.

  I continued hastily, “I was sure you were lying about my papa when you didn’t repeat your accusation to anyone else; lawyers tend to be careful about slander. Then the other day I saw someone cleaning out a rain gutter with a stick, and I remembered what I’d seen in your back yard. There was a broken plant on the step, and above it, under your rain gutter, there was a macramé plant hanger with a two-by-two stuck in the mesh. It occurred to me that maybe you’d climbed your porch railing and pulled yourself onto the roof to clean your rain gutter with the two-by-two—you’re a local, you probably knew a storm was coming. I remembered that Kirsten’s needlepoint was on the floor near the back door, like she’d gone running out there in a hurry. It wasn’t near the front door, like it should have been if she’d run out front because of an accident.”

  I held the gun behind me, out of Gary’s line of sight. I wiggled it a bit, trying to catch Hal’s eye.

  Gary’s tone was sardonic. “So I fall off the roof, then I hobble around to the front of my house, for some nefarious reason of my own.”

  “I’d made you nervous at my office-warming party, talking about Lennart, telling you I had my own detective, that I knew about Kirsten’s property in San Francisco, that I’d moved into a house across the street from yours. You wanted me to think you had something on me, too; you wanted me to think you could blackmail me, if you chose to. You weren’t hurt badly—a nurse at the hospital told me so. And yet Kirsten called everyone she could think of— ambulance, cops, fire department. You knew I was due home any minute to meet you at my house, and you were putting on a show for me. You wanted to implicate my father—but only to me. You wanted to scare me. To keep me quiet about Lennart.”

  Gary said, “You’ll never prove it wasn’t a hit-and-run.”

  He was right about that, and we both knew it. But then, I didn’t want to make Gary feel threatened. Not while he was pointing a gun at my belly. I was playing for time, trying to avoid the inevitable question.

  But it came, anyway. “Where the hell is my wife’s will?”

  It was now or never. I had to find a way to make Hal notice the gun. Gary would never believe I hadn’t purloined that will. I believed he’d murdered Lennart; of course I’d want to deprive him of Lennart’s money.

  I said, apropos of nothing, “Tonight my Aunt Diana said I was slumming it with the local boys.”

  I saw my ex-husband shake his head, perplexed. I didn’t dare glance at Hal, didn’t dare do anything that might make Gary Gleason look away from my face.

  But I knew the statement would make Hal look at me—not at Gary, not at Gary’s gun. At me. I raised the gun several inches behind my back, extending it toward Hal.

  I said, “The will wasn’t with Kirsten’s letters, Gary. If you haven’t found it, she must have destroyed it herself. Maybe she felt guilty.”

  I didn’t believe that. Gary wouldn’t either.

  I’m sorry, senators, I prayed. I was only doing my job.

  I was startled when Hal’s fingers brushed mine. I jerked involuntarily, and Gary’s gun came up suddenly. Behind my back, the other gun, my gun, was wrested from my hand; and something—Hal’s fist—slammed into my shoulder, pitching me sideways onto the sand. I landed painfully, blinded by grit. A twist of driftwood sliced my cheek.

  There was a blast. It sounded like a bomb, but I knew it was a gunshot. I heard it echo in the rocks. I smelled burnt powder.

  I tried to blink the sand and smoke out of my eyes, tried to use the Mercedes headlights as a landmark. I had to see whether my cousin was still standing.

  As I scrambled to my knees, one of the men—I was too disoriented to know which—leapt over me. A second later, both of them hit the wet beach, covering me in a blizzard of damp sand. I could heard their grunting battle, but I wasn’t sure which was topmost.

  Before I could orient myself, one of them was back on his feet.

  38

  “It’s okay,” Hal panted. “It’s okay, Laura. I’ve got both guns.”

  I squinted up at him, my eyes stinging with grit. Beside me, Gary Gleason lay on his back, knees tucked up, hugging his ribs and coughing.

  “Point one at him, Hal,” I shouted over the roar of wind against rock. “He killed Lennart Strindberg, and by god he’s going to admit it.”

  I knelt beside my ex-husband. My knees sank a few inches into the icy sand. The surface layer swirled around me, pelting my cheeks, whistling past my ears. “You were stupid to stage that hit-and-run, Gary. Once I realized you’d done that, I was sure you’d killed Lennart. You wouldn’t have been so determined to shut me up, otherwise.”

  My ex-husband lay still, clutching his side.

  “It was mean-spirited of you to involve poor John Loftus. To rig an exhaust leak you knew they’d blame on your mechanic.” I remembered Captain Loftus quietly praising his son for dying in Vietnam. Praiseworthy or not, the sacrifice had been unnecessary. “John had been in trouble before for screwing up an exhaust system, and he’d just worked on the VW. He was a convenient scapegoat—and you’d never forgiven him for shooting out the Peace Center’s windows with his BB gun.”

  Gary sat up, looking behind me. Our positions were reversed now. He faced the headlights. His fierce wariness satisfied me that Hal was indeed pointing a gun at him.

  I continued, “You booby-trapped the VW’s exhaust system. You rigged it so carbon monoxide flowed in through the heater. Then you had Kirsten pick up Lennart in our car. She probably told him she was going to reconcile with him, but that she needed to tell you first. Then she drove him to wherever you were staying, and she left him in the car with the heater running while she went inside, supposedly to you. You two must have sat in there—how long? five, ten minutes?—waiting for Lennart to be overcome by the fumes.”

  Gary didn’t look at me. He continued looking over my shoulder. I glanced back and saw the glint of gunmetal.

  “You always were the practical one, Gary. Idealistic, too, in a hip sort of way, but practical enough to keep your affair with Kirsten a secret until Lennart made a will in her favor. While you lived with me, my father helped you financially. When you moved in with Kirsten, you needed a new sugar daddy. And Lennart was it. His money spared you the drudgery of a menial job like John Loftus’s. It gave you the wherewithal to educate yourself, so you could be a committed young lawyer, staging sit-ins to save the egrets.”

  Gary transferred his gaze to my face. But he said nothing, admitted nothing.

  “You must have been furious when Lennart left the car to go find a phone booth and call me at the motel.”

  I watched him scowl, start to speak, hesitate. He clutched at straws, like any trial lawyer faced with damning evidence: “You say you got a phone call at the motel at midnight. The police r
eport says Lennart was dead at eleven forty-five.”

  “Captain Loftus must have altered the police report. When he found Lennart dead in the VW, out here near the jetty …” I looked at its black, craggy outline against the lighter sky. “When he realized Lennart had been asphyxiated by exhaust, he must have panicked. His son repaired Volkswagens, and he’d screwed up an exhaust system before. I think the captain drove into town, got a hose, came back and ran it from the exhaust pipe into the car. I think he changed the police records to read that he’d found the body at eleven forty-five, in case anyone had seen him in town after midnight, picking up the hose and the hardware he needed.”

  “I thought, according to your scenario, that the Volkswagen was parked where I was staying.” My ex-husband’s tone managed to be both supercilious and conciliatory.

  “It was, but when Lennart turned off the engine and went to call me, you and Kirsten had to think of an alternate plan. When Lennart got back, he found you waiting for him in the Volkswagen. You probably said you wanted to talk to him—he was too nice a person to say no. So you drove him out to the jetty, then made an excuse to leave the car, just like I did a while ago. You turned on the heater and walked away. You waited until Lennart passed out, then you shifted him into the driver’s seat. You locked the car with the engine running and the heater still on. Then you walked out to the road, where Kirsten picked you up in her car.”

  My ex-husband glanced at the gun in my cousin’s hand. “You’ll never prove it—especially if you plan to accuse our good-old-boy police captain of malfeasance.” He looked at me again. And smiled.

  If I’d had the gun in my hand, I might have overcome my reluctance to fire it. Gary Gleason had always been infuriatingly confident. I’d have liked to scare the hell out of him, just once.

  I looked up at Hal to make sure he appeared sufficiently menacing. He was staring out over the sand flats.

  “Headlights,” he said.

  I followed his gaze. A car was driving slowly through the abandoned housing development.